The World as Will and Idea, Volume 2 quotes

It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of its value.

For the faults are particular and finite, and can therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible.

For the faults are particular and finite, and can therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and inexhaustible.

Therefore they do not grow old, but become the instructor of many succeeding centuries.

The perfected masterpiece of a truly great mind will always produce a deep and powerful effect upon the whole human race, so much so that it is impossible to calculate to what distant centuries and lands its enlightening influence may extend.

Little by little, even in youth, this new generation partially receives the contents of that spring through a thousand indirect channels, gradually assimilates it, and so participates in the benefit which was destined to flow to mankind from that great mind.

So slowly does the education of the human race, the weak yet refractory pupil of genius, advance.

Thus with Kant's teaching also;

but Kant then circumnavigated the world and showed that, because it is round, one cannot get out of it by horizontal movement, but that yet by perpendicular movement this is perhaps not impossible.

We may also say that Kant's doctrine affords the insight that we must seek the end and beginning of the world, not without, but within us.

All this, however, rests on the fundamental distinction between dogmatic and critical or transcendental philosophy.

Thus it was reserved for Kant to enable the idealistic point of view to obtain the ascendancy in Europe, at least in philosophy; the point of view which throughout all non-Mohammedan Asia, and indeed essentially, is that of religion.

Before Kant, then, we were in time; now time is in us, and so on.

Ethics also were treated by that realistic philosophy according to the laws of the phenomenon, which it regarded as absolute and valid also for the thing in itself.

its fundamental principles and conceptions must never be taken from either inner or outer experience.” Yet absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of this cardinal assertion except the etymological argument from the word metaphysic. In truth, however, the matter stands thus:

The world and our own existence presents itself to us necessarily as a riddle.

It is now assumed, without more ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at from a thorough understanding of the world itself, but must be sought in something entirely different from the world (for that is the meaning of “beyond the possibility …

But the most injurious result of Kant's occasionally obscure language is, that it acted as exemplar vitiis imitabile; indeed, it was misconstrued as a pernicious [pg 022] authorisation.

The public was compelled to see that what is obscure is not always without significance; consequently, what was without significance took refuge behind obscure language.

Fichte was the first to seize this new privilege and use it vigorously; Schelling at least equalled him; and a host of hungry scribblers, without talent and without honesty, soon outbade them both.

In the Transcendental Æsthetic all his propositions are really proved from undeniable facts of consciousness, in the Transcendental Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere assertions that thus it is and must be.

Here, then, as everywhere, the language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for style is the physiognomy of the mind.

We have still to remark, that whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of causality, and then what he has said turns out correct;

Therefore all these do not by any means spring from one faculty of the mind, the understanding, but arise through the conflict of abstract and intuitive knowledge, as will be seen directly.

I hold that to be necessary and to be the consequent of a given reason are absolutely interchangeable notions, and completely identical.

We can never know, nor even think, anything as necessary, except so far as we regard it as the consequent of a given reason;

… ground of being in time and space), and finally a practical necessity, by which we intend to signify not determination through a pretended categorical imperative, but the necessary occurrence of an action according to the motives presented, in the case of a given empirical character.

But everything necessary is only so relatively, that is, under the presupposition of the reason from which it follows; therefore absolute necessity is a contradiction.

With regard to the rest, I refer to § 49 of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason.

For every general proposition, thus every major, always determines things with reference to actuality only under a presupposition, therefore hypothetically; for example, the capability of being burnt down has as a presupposition the catching fire. This presupposition is produced in the minor.

The major always loads the cannon, but only if the minor brings the match does the shot, i.e., the conclusion, follow.

This holds good throughout of the relation of possibility to actuality.

I must assume a knowledge of both these expositions for the understanding of what follows.

It is false that time remains the same through all change; on the contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a permanent time is a contradiction.

Kant's proof is untenable, strenuously as he has supported it with sophisms; indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions. Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of time (p. 177; V. 219), he says, quite rightly (p. 183; V.

Just on this account Kant conceived them as the forms of all thought.

Grammar is related to logic as clothes to the body.

Should not, therefore, these primary conceptions, the ground-bass of the reason, which is the foundation of all special thought, without whose application, therefore, no thought can take place, ultimately lie in those conceptions which [pg 086] just on account of their exceeding generality (transcendentalism) have …

(1.)

Thought consists throughout of judging; judgments are the threads of its whole web, for without making use of a verb our thought does not move, and as often as we use a verb we judge.

(2.) Every judgment consists in the recognition of the relation between subject and predicate, which it separates or unites with various restrictions. It unites them from the recognition of the actual identity of the two, which can only happen in the case of synonyms;

Moreover, how should it be essential to the reason to presuppose something which it must know to be an absurdity as soon as it reflects?

The source of that conception of the unconditioned is rather to be found only in the indolence of the individual who wishes by means of it to get rid of all further questions, whether his own or of others, though entirely without justification.

Now Kant himself denies objective validity to this pretended principle of reason; he gives it, however, as a necessary subjective assumption, and thus introduces an irremediable split into our knowledge, which he soon allows to appear more clearly.

and now it is proved that this is logically contradicted by completeness, and yet every present is the end of the past, which no one doubted.

The end of a beginningless series can, however, always be thought, without prejudice to the fact that it has no beginning; just as, conversely, the beginning of an endless series can also be thought.

But against the real, true argument of the antithesis, that the changes of the world necessarily presuppose an infinite series of changes backwards, absolutely nothing is advanced.

If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us.

Only the other side of our own being can disclose to us the other side of the inner being of things.

This path I have followed. But Kant's inference to the thing in itself, contrary as it is to his own teaching, obtains some excuse from the following circumstance.

But in the ordinary consciousness, unenlightened by philosophy, the will is at once confused with its manifestation, and what belongs only to the former is attributed to the latter, whence arises the illusion of the unconditioned freedom of the individual.

Therefore Spinoza says rightly that if the projected stone had consciousness, it would believe that it flew of its own free will.

For certainly the in-itself of the stone also is the will, which alone is free; but, as in all its manifestations, here also, where it appears as a stone, it is already fully determined.

… is just its objectification, but does not stand in a causal relation to it, for this relation is only found within the sphere of the phenomenon, thus presupposes it, and cannot embrace the phenomenon itself and connect it with what is expressly not a phenomenon.

The world itself can only be explained through the will (for it is the will itself, so far as it manifests itself), and not through causality.

But in the world causality is the sole principle of explanation, and everything happens simply according to the laws of nature.

to which is added man's natural inclination to personify everything, and finally the hope of effecting something by prayers and flattery, and even by gifts.

In every human undertaking there is something which is not in our power and does not come within our calculations; the wish to win this for oneself is the origin of the gods.

“Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor” is an old and true saying of Petronius. It is principally this proof which is criticised by Hume, who throughout appears as Kant's forerunner in the writings referred to above.

Or are the precepts which the prudent and consistent, the thoughtful and far-seeing Machiavelli prescribes to the prince irrational?10

As wickedness is quite consistent with reason, and indeed only becomes really terrible in this conjunction, so, conversely, nobleness is sometimes joined with want of reason.

To this may be attributed the action of Coriolanus, who, after he had applied all his strength for years to the accomplishment of his revenge upon the Romans, when at length the time came, allowed himself to be softened by the prayers of the Senate …

To translate nil admirari “to admire nothing” is quite wrong. This Horatian maxim does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical, and its real meaning is: “Prize no object unconditionally.

Do not fall in love with anything; do not believe that the possession of anything can give you happiness.

Every intense longing for an object is only a delusive chimera, which one may just as well, and much more easily, get quit of by fuller knowledge as by attained possession.” Cicero also uses admirari in this sense (De Divinatione, ii. 2).

This Horatian maxim does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical, and its real meaning is: “Prize no object unconditionally. Do not fall in love with anything; do not believe that the possession of anything can give you happiness.

Every intense longing for an object is only a delusive chimera, which one may just as well, and much more easily, get quit of by fuller knowledge as by attained possession.

” Cicero also uses admirari in this sense (De Divinatione, ii. 2). What Horace means is thus the αθαμβια and ακαταπληξις, also αθαυμασια, which Democritus before him prized as the highest good (see Clem. Alex. Strom., ii. 21, and cf. Strabo, i. p.

Happiness in the highest good is not indeed really meant to be the motive for virtue; yet there it is, like a secret article, the existence of which reduces all the rest to a mere sham contract.

It is not really the reward of virtue, but yet it is a voluntary gift for which virtue, after work accomplished, stealthily opens the hand.

One may convince oneself of this from the “Critique of Practical Reason” (p. 223-266 of the fourth, or p. 264-295 of Rosenkranz's, edition).

… works of genius, i.e., genuine works of art, so little could all the professors of ethics and preachers of virtue transform an ignoble into a virtuous and noble character, the impossibility of which is very much more apparent than that of turning lead into gold.

The search for a system of ethics and a first principle of the same, which would have practical influence and would actually transform and better the human race, is just like the search for the philosopher's stone.

Yet I have spoken at length at the end of the fourth book of the possibility of an entire change of mind or conversion of man (new birth), not by means of abstract (ethics) but of intuitive knowledge (the work of grace).

Thus true philosophy must always be idealistic; indeed, it must be so in order to be merely honest.

For nothing is more certain than that no man ever came out of himself in order to identify himself directly with things which are different from him; but everything of which he has certain, and therefore immediate, knowledge lies within his own consciousness.

Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no immediate certainty; but the first principles of a science must have such certainty. For the empirical standpoint of the other sciences it is quite right to assume the objective world as something absolutely given;

and the knowledge of it is only made difficult by the fact that it is indeed so simple, and that it is not every one who has sufficient power of reflection to go back to the first elements of his consciousness of things.

There can never be an absolute and independent objective existence; indeed such an existence is quite unintelligible.

For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject, is thus the idea of this subject, and consequently is conditioned by it, and also by its forms, the forms of the idea, which depend upon the subject …

But to all this we have yet to add the Berkeleian result, which has been revised by me, [pg 175] that every object, whatever its origin may be, is as object already conditioned by the subject, is in fact merely its idea.

The aim of realism is indeed the object without subject; but it is impossible even to conceive such an object distinctly.

From this whole inquiry it follows with certainty and distinctness that it is absolutely impossible to attain to the comprehension of the inner nature of things upon the path of mere knowledge and perception.

On the other hand, materialism also has its warrant. It is just as true that the knower is a product of matter as that matter is merely the idea of the knower; but it is also just as one-sided.

For materialism is the philosophy of the subject that forgets to take account of itself.

And, accordingly, as against the assertion that I am a mere modification of matter, this must be insisted upon, that all matter exists merely in my idea; and it is no less right.

… and false safeguard against materialism, while the real and true safeguard is idealism, which, by making the objective world dependent upon us, gives the needed counterpoise to the position of dependence upon the objective world, in which we are placed by the course of nature.

The world from which I part at death is, in another aspect, only my idea.

The centre of gravity of existence falls back into the subject. What is proved is not, as in spiritualism, that the knower is independent of matter, but that all matter is dependent on him.

… assertion, “the subject would still remain a knowing being if it had no object, i.e., if it had absolutely no idea,” is just as false as the assertion of the crude understanding, “the world, the object, would still exist, even if there were no subject.”

A consciousness without an object is no consciousness.

A thinking subject has conceptions for its object; a subject of sense perception has objects with the qualities corresponding [pg 179] to its organisation.

Thou dost well to refrain from contesting my existence on the ground that it is linked to individuals; for, as inseparably as I am joined to them, thou art joined to thy sister, Form, and hast never appeared without her.

No eye hath yet seen either thee or me naked and isolated; for we are both mere abstractions.

It is in reality one being that perceives itself and is perceived by itself, but whose real being cannot consist either in perceiving or in being perceived, since these are divided between us two.

Therefore that externality to us to which we refer objects, on the occasion of sensations of sight, is itself really within our heads; for that is its whole sphere of activity.

Much as in the theatre we see the mountains, the woods, and the sea, but yet everything is inside the house.

From this it becomes intelligible that we perceive things in the relation of externality, and yet in every respect immediately, but have not within us an idea of the things which lie outside us, different from these things.

that the same occasion which millions of ordinary minds have experienced before brings them to the thought, to the discovery, that other people are subsequently surprised they did not reach themselves, for they certainly can think afterwards, but they cannot think before.

Thus the sun shone on all statues, but only the statue of Memnon gave forth a sound.

For this reason Kant, Gœthe, and Jean Paul were highly sensitive to every noise, as their biographers bear witness.13 Gœthe in his last years bought a house which had fallen into disrepair close to his own, simply in order that he might not have to …

F—— used to stick his fingers into sulphur if he wished to play the piano.... Such things do not [pg 199] interfere with the average mind;... it acts like a coarse sieve” (Vermischte Schriften, vol. i. p. 398).

I have long really held the opinion that the amount of noise which any one can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity, and therefore may be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.

Therefore, if I hear the dogs barking for hours together in the court of a house without being stopped, I know what to think of the intellectual capacity of the inhabitants.

but the most varied multitude of things before our eyes admits of entirely unhindered and quiet thought.

Therefore the thinking mind lives at peace with the eye, but is always at war with the ear.

This opposition of the two senses is also confirmed by the fact that if deaf and dumb persons are cured by galvanism they become deadly pale with terror at the first sounds they hear (Gilbert's “Annalen der Physik,” vol. x. p.

… subject, are the mode in which the process of objective apperception is brought about in the brain, has already a sufficient proof in the absolute impossibility of thinking away time and space, while we can very easily think away everything that is presented in them.

The hand can leave go of everything except itself.

However, I wish here to illustrate by a few examples and deductions the more exact proofs of this truth which are given by Kant, not for the purpose of refuting stupid objections, but for the use of those who may have to expound Kant's doctrine …

For, in general, whether a given judgment is analytical or synthetical can only be determined in the particular case according as [pg 204] the conception of the subject in the mind of the person judging is more or less complete.

The conception “cat” contains in the mind of a Cuvier a hundred times more than in that of his servant; therefore the same judgments about it will be synthetical for the latter, and only analytical for the former.

But if we take the conceptions objectively, and now wish to decide whether a given judgment is analytical or synthetical, we must change the predicate into its contradictory opposite, and apply this to the subject without a copula.

Although time, like space, is the form of knowledge of the subject, yet, just like space, it presents itself as independent of the subject and completely objective. Against our will, or without our knowledge, it goes fast or slow.

We ask what o'clock it is; we investigate time, as if it were something quite objective.

And what is this objective existence? Not the progress of the stars, or of the clocks, which merely serve to measure the course of time itself, but it is something different from all things, and yet, like them, independent of our will and knowledge.

And what is this objective existence? Not the progress of the stars, or of the clocks, which merely serve to measure the course of time itself, but it is something different from all things, and yet, like them, independent of our will and knowledge.

It exists only in the heads of percipient beings, but the uniformity of its course and its independence of the will give it the authority of objectivity.

Time is primarily the form of inner sense. Anticipating the following book, I remark that the only object of inner sense is the individual will of the knowing subject.

Its dreams also depend upon this phantasy.

The consciousness of the brutes is accordingly a mere succession of presents, none of which, however, exist as future before they appear, nor as past after they have vanished; which is the specific difference of human consciousness.

Hence the brutes have infinitely less to suffer than we have, because they know no other pains but those which the present directly brings.

even the great majority of men live with very little reflection. Another consequence of the special nature of the intellect of the brutes, which we have explained is the perfect accordance of their consciousness with their environment.

Between the brute and the external world there is nothing, but between us and the external world there is always our thought about it, which makes us often inapproachable to it, and it to us.

Only in the case of children and very primitive men is this wall of partition so thin that in order to see what goes on in them we only need to see what goes on round about them.

Therefore the brutes are incapable alike of purpose and dissimulation; they reserve nothing.

In this respect the dog stands to the man in the same relation as a glass goblet to a metal one, and this helps greatly to endear the dog so much to us, for it affords us great pleasure to see all those inclinations and emotions which we so often conceal displayed simply and openly in him.

In general, the brutes always play, as it were, with their hand exposed; and therefore we contemplate with so much pleasure their behaviour towards each other, both when they belong to the same and to different species.

For their reason is almost entirely potential, not actual.

Words and speech are thus the indispensable means of distinct thought.

But as every means, every machine, [pg 239] at once burdens and hinders, so also does language; for it forces the fluid and modifiable thoughts, with their infinitely fine distinctions of difference, into certain rigid, permanent forms, and thus in fixing also fetters them.

but if afterwards they wish to make the incident clear to themselves, each of them will call up in his imagination a different image of it, which differs considerably from the correct image that is possessed only by the eye-witness.

This is the primary reason (which, however, is accompanied by others) why every fact is necessarily distorted by being repeatedly told.

The second recounter communicates conceptions which he has abstracted from the image of his own imagination, and from these conceptions the third now forms another image differing still more widely from the truth, and this again he translates into conceptions, and so the process goes …

… Chiliasts to the neighbourhood of Ararat, because the new kingdom of God, specially announced by Jung Stilling, was to appear there.17 Gall relates that in his time a mother killed her child and roasted it in order to cure her husband's rheumatism with its fat.18

The tragical side of error lies in the practical, the comical is reserved for the theoretical.

For example, if we could firmly persuade three men that the sun is not the cause of daylight, we might hope to see it soon established as the general conviction.

These are the abstract motives, the mere thoughts, which are by no means always drawn from his own experience, but often come to him only through the talk and example of others, through tradition and literature.

Having become accessible to thought, he is at once exposed to error.

But every error must sooner or later do harm, and the greater the error the greater the harm it will do. The individual error must be atoned for by him who cherishes it, and often he has to pay dearly for it.

Having become accessible to thought, he is at once exposed to error. But every error must sooner or later do harm, and the greater the error the greater the harm it will do.

The individual error must be atoned for by him who cherishes it, and often he has to pay dearly for it.

And the same thing holds good on a large scale of the common errors of whole nations.

It is the condition, according to the degree of its perfection, of wit, judgment, ingenuity, genius. The former faculty, on the contrary, results in little more than possibly rational reflections.

The inmost kernel of all genuine and actual knowledge is a perception; and every new truth is the profit or gain yielded by a perception.

All original thinking takes place in images, and this is why imagination is so necessary an instrument of thought, and minds that lack imagination will never accomplish much, unless it be in mathematics.

The former faculty, on the contrary, results in little more than possibly rational reflections. The inmost kernel of all genuine and actual knowledge is a perception; and every new truth is the profit or gain yielded by a perception.

All original thinking takes place in images, and this is why imagination is so necessary an instrument of thought, and minds that lack imagination will never accomplish much, unless it be in mathematics.

On the other hand, merely abstract thoughts, which have no kernel of perception, are like cloud-structures, without reality. Even writing and speaking, whether didactic or poetical, has for its final aim to guide the reader to the same concrete knowledge from which the author started;

the difficulty is to extract it.

From a book, on the contrary, at the best we only receive the truth at second hand, and oftener not at all.

In most books, putting out of account those that are thoroughly bad, the author, when their content is not altogether empirical, has certainly thought but not perceived; he has written from reflection, not from intuition, and it is this that makes them commonplace and tedious.

Only the worst knowledge, abstract, secondary knowledge, the conception, the mere shadow of true knowledge, is unconditionally communicable.

If perceptions were communicable, that would be a communication worth the trouble; but at last every one must remain in his own skin and skull, and no one can help another.

To enrich the conception from perception is the unceasing endeavour of poetry and philosophy. However, the aims of man are essentially practical;

thus he becomes possessed of worldly wisdom. Thus, as a rule, the man of the world cannot teach his accumulated truth and wisdom, but only make use of it; he rightly comprehends each event as it happens, and determines what is in conformity with it.

That books will not take the place of experience nor learning of genius are two kindred phenomena.

Their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the concrete.

It does not consist in principles and thoughts, which one can carry about ready in his mind, as results of his own research or that of others; but it is the whole manner in which the world presents itself in his mind.

This varies so much that on account of it the wise man lives in another world from the fool, and the genius sees another world from the blockhead.

That the works of the man of genius immeasurably surpass those of all others arises simply from the fact that the world which he sees, and from which he takes his utterances, is so much clearer, as it were more profoundly worked out, than that …

then the rule itself has to be presented to us at the right time by the memory, which seldom punctually happens; then the propositio minor has to be formed out of the present case, and finally the conclusion drawn.

Before all this is done the opportunity has generally turned its back upon us, and then those excellent principles and rules serve at the most to enable us to measure the magnitude of the error we have committed.

Certainly with time we gain in this way experience and practice, which slowly grows to knowledge of the world, and thus, in connection with this, the abstract rules may certainly become fruitful.

while pre-eminence in abstract knowledge cannot do this. In accordance with what has been said, we find in all classes men of intellectual superiority, and often quite without learning.

Natural understanding can take the place of almost every degree of culture, but no culture can take the place of natural understanding.

The scholar has the advantage of such men in the possession of a wealth of cases and facts (historical knowledge) and of causal determinations (natural science), all in well-ordered connection, easily surveyed;

… directly injures the mind—the more so that completeness and constant connection of the system of our own thought and knowledge must pay the penalty if we so often arbitrarily interrupt it in order to gain room for a line of thought entirely strange to us.

To banish my own thought in order to make room for that of a book would seem to me like what Shakespeare censures in the tourists of his time, that they sold their own land to see that of others.

Yet the inclination for reading of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui, from the poverty of their own minds, which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others. In order to have thoughts they must read something;

This is the crucial point. And upon this also depends the fact that the former always speak only of what they have read, while the latter, on the contrary, speaks of what he has thought, and that they are, as Pope says:

The mind is naturally free, not a slave; only what it does willingly, of its own accord, succeeds.

On the other hand, the compulsory exertion of a mind in studies for which it is not qualified, or when it has become tired, or in general too continuously and invita Minerva, dulls the brain, just as reading by moonlight dulls the eyes.

It is precisely the same with what we read. Only so far as it gives food for thought does it increase our insight and true knowledge. Therefore Heracleitus says: “πολυμαθια νουν ου διδασκει” (multiscitia non dat intellectum).

It seems, however, to me that learning may be compared to a heavy suit of armour, which certainly makes the strong man quite invincible, but to the weak man is a burden under which he sinks altogether.

The exposition given in our third book of the knowledge of the (Platonic) Ideas, as the highest attainable by man, and at the same time entirely perceptive or intuitive knowledge, is a proof that the source of true wisdom does not lie in abstract rational …

… many, on the other hand, who study in order to fill their memory do not use the rounds of the ladder to mount by, but take them off, and load themselves with them to carry them away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden.

They remain always below, because they bear what ought to have borne them.

Upon the truth set forth here, that the kernel of all knowledge is the perceptive or intuitive apprehension, depends the true and profound remark of Helvetius, that the really characteristic and original views of which a gifted individual is capable, and the working up, development, …

and, moreover, that most depends upon the quality of these perceptions.

Conceptions and abstractions which do not ultimately refer to perceptions are like paths in the wood that end without leading out of it.

The great value of conceptions lies in the fact that by means of them the original material of knowledge is more easily handled, surveyed, and arranged.

for it is true the conclusion cannot contain more than the premisses.

Conceptions are certainly the material of philosophy, but only as marble is the material of the sculptor.

It is not to work out of them but in them; that is to say, it is to deposit its results in them, but not to start from them as what is given.

On this account these diatribes are just as unfruitful and useless as they are tedious, which is saying a great deal. At all times we find persons, like this theologian, who is too fond of philosophising, famous while they are alive, afterwards soon forgotten.

My advice is rather to read those whose fate has been the opposite of this, for time is short and valuable.

Now although, in accordance with all that has been said, wide, abstract conceptions, which can be realised in no perception, must never be the source of knowledge, the starting-point or the proper material of philosophy, yet sometimes particular results of philosophy are such as can …

Therefore here, in the fundamental judgments, lies the difficulty of the sciences, not in the inferences from these.

To infer is easy, to judge is difficult.

False inferences are rare, false judgments are always the order of the day. Not less in practical life has the faculty of judgment to give the decision in all fundamental conclusions and important determinations.

Therefore here, in the fundamental judgments, lies the difficulty of the sciences, not in the inferences from these. To infer is easy, to judge is difficult.

False inferences are rare, false judgments are always the order of the day.

Not less in practical life has the faculty of judgment to give the decision in all fundamental conclusions and important determinations. Its office is in the main like that of the judicial sentence.

Besides, it is the conceptions of thought that often oppose the gratification of our immediate desires, for, as the medium of the past, the future, and of seriousness, they are the vehicle of our fears, our repentance, and all our cares.

It must therefore be diverting to us to see this strict, untiring, troublesome governess, the reason, for once convicted of insufficiency.

On this account then the mien or appearance of laughter is very closely related to that of joy.

Yet it may be remarked in passing that his one friend the dog has an analogous characteristic action peculiar to him alone in distinction from all other brutes, the very expressive, kindly, and thoroughly honest fawning and wagging of its tail.

But how favourably does this salutation given him by nature compare with the bows and simpering civilities of men.

At least for the present, it is a thousand times more reliable than their assurance of inward friendship and devotion.

The opposite of laughing and joking is seriousness. Accordingly it consists in the consciousness of the perfect agreement and congruity of the conception, or thought, with what is perceived, or the reality.

The serious man is convinced that he thinks the things as they are, and that they are as he thinks them.

This is just why the transition from profound seriousness to laughter is so easy, and can be effected by trifles.

For the more perfect that agreement assumed by seriousness may seem to be, the more easily is it destroyed by the unexpected discovery [pg 281] of even a slight incongruity.

Therefore the more a man is capable of entire seriousness, the more heartily can he laugh.

Men whose laughter is always affected and forced are intellectually and morally of little worth; and in general the way of laughing, and, on the other hand, the occasions of it, are very characteristic of the person.

Therefore the more a man is capable of entire seriousness, the more heartily can he laugh.

Men whose laughter is always affected and forced are intellectually and morally of little worth; and in general the way of laughing, and, on the other hand, the occasions of it, are very characteristic of the person.

That the relations of the sexes afford the easiest materials for jokes always ready to hand and within the reach of the weakest wit, as is proved by the abundance of obscene jests, could not be if it were not that the deepest seriousness lies …

Hence the impression of the intentionally ludicrous, thus of the joke, is produced, behind which, however, the deepest seriousness is concealed and shines through.

Irony begins with a serious air and ends with a smile; with humour the order is reversed.

The words of Mercutio quoted above may serve as an example of humour. Also in “Hamlet”—Polonius: “My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Hamlet:

but who is such?” Heinrich Heine appears as a true humourist in his “Romancero.”

Behind all his jokes and drollery we discern a profound seriousness, which is ashamed to appear unveiled.

Accordingly humour depends upon a special kind of mood or temper (German, Laune, probably from Luna) through which conception in all its modifications, a decided predominance of the subjective over the objective in the apprehension of the external world, is thought.

From this it is easy to see that one truth can never overthrow another, but all must ultimately agree; because in the concrete or perceptible, which is their common foundation, no contradiction is possible.

Therefore no truth has anything to fear from other truths.

Illusion and error have to fear every truth, because through the logical connection of all truths even the most distant must some time strike its blow at every error.

From this it is easy to see that one truth can never overthrow another, but all must ultimately agree; because in the concrete or perceptible, which is their common foundation, no contradiction is possible. Therefore no truth has anything to fear from other truths.

Illusion and error have to fear every truth, because through the logical connection of all truths even the most distant must some time strike its blow at every error.

This second law of thought is therefore the connecting link between logic and what is no longer logic, but the matter of thought.

On this account it is always perfectly certain, and accomplishes more by a single example in contrarium than the induction does by innumerable examples in favour of the proposition propounded.

So much easier is it to refute than to prove, to overthrow than to establish.

And all this by conducting the stream of our thought into their minds, through the medium of words, with such force as to carry their thought from the direction it has already taken, and sweep it along with ours in its course.

The more their previous course of thought differs from ours, the greater is this achievement.

From this it is easily understood how personal conviction and passion make a man eloquent; and in general, eloquence is more the gift of nature than the work of art; yet here, also, art will support nature.

Therefore we ought rather to keep the conclusion completely concealed, and only advance the premisses [pg 306] distinctly, fully, and in different lights.

Indeed, if possible, we ought not to express the conclusion at all.

It will come necessarily and regularly of its own accord into the reason of the hearers, and the conviction thus born in themselves will be all the more genuine, and will also be accompanied by self-esteem instead of shame.

Both of them may be compared to a man who first sings himself a tune and afterwards dances to it.

The thinking mind must find its way from original tendency.

Rule and application, method and achievement, must, like matter and form, be inseparable. But after we have reached the goal we may consider the path we have followed. Æsthetics and methodology are, from their nature, younger than poetry and philosophy;

But if it comes to this, if the spirit of the ancients bound up with their languages disappears from a liberal education, then coarseness, insipidity, and vulgarity will take possession of the whole of literature.

For the works of the ancients are the pole-star of every artistic or literary effort; if it sets they are lost.

Even now we can observe from the miserable and puerile style of most writers that they have never written Latin.24 The study of the classical authors is very properly called the study of Humanity, for through it the student first becomes a man again, for …

they would therefore in consistency be obliged to make “lösen” also take the place everywhere of “ablösen” (to relieve, used of guards), “auslösen” (to release), “einlösen” (to redeem), &c., and in these, as in the former case, deprive the language of definiteness of expression.

But to make the language poorer by a word means to make the thought of the nation poorer by a conception.

Yet this is the tendency of the united efforts of almost all our writers of books for the last ten or twenty years.

for what could be more improper than that changes of language should proceed from the lowest branch of literature?

Language, especially a relatively speaking original language like German, is the most valuable inheritance of a nation, and it is also an exceedingly complicated work of art, easily injured, and which cannot again be restored, therefore a noli me tangere.

Other nations have felt this, and have shown great piety towards their languages, although far less complete than German. Therefore the language of Dante and Petrarch differs only in trifles from that of to-day;

and it goes on almost as unconsciously as the conversion of nourishment into the humours and substance of the body.

Hence it is that we can often give no account of the origin of our deepest thoughts.

They are the birth of our mysterious inner life. Judgments, thoughts, purposes, rise from out that deep unexpectedly and to our own surprise. A letter brings us unlooked-for and important news, in consequence of which our thoughts and motives are disordered;

and it goes on almost as unconsciously as the conversion of nourishment into the humours and substance of the body. Hence it is that we can often give no account of the origin of our deepest thoughts.

They are the birth of our mysterious inner life.

Judgments, thoughts, purposes, rise from out that deep unexpectedly and to our own surprise. A letter brings us unlooked-for and important news, in consequence of which our thoughts and motives are disordered;

Hence it is that we can often give no account of the origin of our deepest thoughts. They are the birth of our mysterious inner life.

Judgments, thoughts, purposes, rise from out that deep unexpectedly and to our own surprise.

A letter brings us unlooked-for and important news, in consequence of which our thoughts and motives are disordered; we get rid of the matter for the present, and think no more about it;

In general our internal process of thought is in reality not so simple as the theory of it; for here it is involved in many ways.

To make the matter clear to our imagination, let us compare our consciousness to a sheet of water of some depth.

Then the distinctly conscious thoughts are merely the surface;

we get rid of the matter for the present, and think no more about it; but next day, or on the third or fourth day after, the whole situation sometimes stands distinctly before us, with what we have to do in the circumstances.

Consciousness is the mere surface of our mind, of which, as of the earth, we do not know the inside, but only the crust.

But in the last instance, or in the secret of our inner being, what sets in activity the association of thought itself, the laws of which were set forth above, is the will, which urges its servant the intellect, according to the measure of its …

Rapidity in doing this is a special gift, but is very dependent upon day and hour; therefore memory sometimes refuses us its service, even in things which at another time it has readily at hand.

This consideration calls us in our studies to strive more to attain to correct insight than to increase our learning, and to lay it to heart that the quality of knowledge is more important than its quantity.

The latter imparts to books only thickness, the former thoroughness and also style; for it is an intensive quantity, while the other is merely extensive.

therefore the whole of knowledge in all its parts is penetrated by it, and in proportion as it is so is valuable or trifling.

With a small quantity, but of good quality, one achieves more than with a very large quantity of bad quality.

The most perfect and satisfactory knowledge is that of perception, but it is limited absolutely to the particular, the individual. The combination of the many and the different in one idea is only possible through the conception, that is, through the omission of the differences;

… inner and essential imperfections of the intellect are further increased by a disturbance which, to a certain extent, is external to it, but yet is unceasing—the influence exerted by the will upon all its operations whenever it is in any way concerned in their result.

Every passion, indeed every inclination and aversion, tinges the objects of knowledge with its colour.

Of most common occurrence is the falsifying of knowledge which is brought about by wishes and hopes, for they picture to us the scarcely possible as probable and well nigh certain, and make us almost incapable of comprehending what is opposed to it:

to the one that is the solution which to the other is only the problem. This depends on the quality of thought and knowledge, which was already referred to above.

As in rooms the degree of light varies, so does it in minds.

We can detect this quality of the whole thought as soon as we have read only a few pages of an author. For in doing so we have been obliged to understand both with his understanding and in his sense;

and similarly, whether for others the problem which they all slink past with such comical seriousness by the same path is no problem at all, or whether it is only that they will not see it.

Many truths remain undiscovered simply on this account, that no one has the courage to look the problem in the face and grapple with it.

On the contrary, the distinctness of thought and clearness of conceptions peculiar to eminent minds produces the effect that even known truths when brought forward by them gain new light, or at least a new stimulus.

This is the reason of the slyness of half-witted persons, and the ground of the paradox: Il y a un mystère dans l'esprit des gens qui n'en ont pas.

For practical life genius is about as useful as an astral telescope in a theatre.

Thus, with regard to the intellect nature is highly aristocratic. The distinctions which it has established are greater than those which are made in any country by birth, rank, wealth, or caste.

With the exception of man, no being wonders at its own existence; but it is to them all so much a matter of course that they do not observe it.

The wisdom of nature speaks out of the peaceful glance of the brutes; for in them the will and the intellect are not yet so widely separated that they can be astonished at each other when they meet again.

With the exception of man, no being wonders at its own existence; but it is to them all so much a matter of course that they do not observe it.

The wisdom of nature speaks out of the peaceful glance of the brutes; for in them the will and the intellect are not yet so widely separated that they can be astonished at each other when they meet again.

Thus here the whole phenomenon is still firmly attached to the stem of nature from which it has come, and is partaker of the unconscious omniscience of the great mother.

… ordinary and everyday degree, and is thus induced to make the universal of the phenomenon his problem, while the investigators in the natural sciences wonder only at exquisite or rare phenomena, and their problem is merely to refer these to phenomena which are better known.

The lower a man stands in an intellectual regard the less of a problem is existence itself for him; everything, how it is, and that it is, appears to him rather a matter of course.

This rests upon the fact that his intellect still remains perfectly true to its original destiny of being serviceable to the will as the medium of motives, and therefore is closely bound up with the world and nature, as an integral part of them.

but without doubt it is the knowledge of death, and along with this the consideration of the suffering and misery of life, which gives the strongest impulse to philosophical reflection and metaphysical explanation of the world.

If our life were endless and painless, it would perhaps occur to no one to ask why the world exists, and is just the kind of world it is; but everything would just be taken as a matter of course.

In accordance with this we find that the interest which philosophical and also religious systems inspire has always its strongest hold in the dogma of some kind of [pg 361] existence after death;

We find in it the saddest and the poorest form of Theism. Much may be lost through the translations; but I have not been able to discover one single valuable thought in it.

Such things show that metaphysical capacity does not go hand in hand with the metaphysical need.

Yet it will appear that in the early ages of the present surface of the earth this was not the case, and that those who stood considerably nearer than we do to the beginning of the human race and the source of organic nature, had …

A religion, on the other hand, being intended for the innumerable multitude who, since they are incapable of examination and thought, would never comprehend the profoundest and most difficult truths sensu proprio, has only the obligation to be true sensu allegorico.

Truth cannot appear naked before the people.

A symptom of this allegorical nature of religions is the mysteries which are to be found perhaps in them all, certain dogmas which cannot even be distinctly thought, not to speak of being literally true.

… it easily passes into a brooding over the fatality which could yet call forth its existence, and by virtue of which such stupendous power as is demanded for the production and maintenance of such a world could be directed so much against its own interest.

The philosophical astonishment is therefore at bottom perplexed and melancholy; philosophy, like the overture to “Don Juan,” commences with a minor chord.

It follows from this that it can neither be Spinozism nor optimism.

… which they produce a specific kind of effect, e.g., weight, hardness, impulsive force, elasticity, warmth, electricity, chemical forces, &c., and which now remain in every explanation which is given, like an unknown quantity, which absolutely cannot be eliminated, in an otherwise perfectly solved algebraical equation.

Accordingly there is no fragment of clay, however little worth, that is not entirely composed of inexplicable qualities.

Thus these two inevitable defects in every purely physical, i.e., causal, explanation show that such an explanation can only be relative, and that its whole method and nature cannot be the only one, the ultimate and thus the sufficient one, i.e., cannot be the method …

while metaphysics strives to pass beyond the phenomenal appearance itself, to that which so appears. And if indeed it had the assistance of an entire and complete experience, it would, as regards the main point, be in no way advantaged by it.

Nay, even if one wandered through all the planets and fixed stars, one would thereby have made no step in metaphysics.

It is rather the case that the greatest advances of physics will make the need of metaphysics ever more felt;

Then, however, the investigator must turn his glance inward; for the intellectual and ethical phenomena are more important than the physical, in the same proportion as, for example, animal magnetism is a far more important phenomenon than mineral magnetism.

The last fundamental secret man carries within himself, and this is accessible to him in the most immediate manner; therefore it is only here that he can hope to find the key to the riddle of the world and gain a clue to the nature of all things.

The special province of metaphysics thus certainly lies in what has been called mental philosophy.

The height to which in our time the natural sciences have risen in this respect entirely throws into the shade all previous centuries, and is a summit which mankind reaches for the first time.

But however great are the advances which physics (understood in the wide sense of the ancients) may make, not the smallest step towards metaphysics is thereby taken, just as a plane can never obtain cubical content by being indefinitely extended.

For all such advances will only perfect our knowledge of the phenomenon; while metaphysics strives to pass beyond the phenomenal appearance itself, to that which so appears.

He therefore rightly taught that in such a way we cannot transcend the possibility of all experience. But there are other paths to metaphysics.

The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy the deciphering of it, the correctness of which is proved by the connection appearing everywhere.

If this whole is only profoundly enough comprehended, and the inner experience is connected with the outer, it must be capable of being interpreted, explained from itself.

To assert anything of that sort would be a presumptuous denial of the limits of human knowledge in general.

Whatever torch we may kindle, and whatever space it may light, our horizon will always remain bounded by profound night.

For the ultimate solution of the riddle of the world must necessarily be concerned with the things in themselves, no longer with the phenomena. But all our forms of knowledge are adapted to the phenomena alone;

… everywhere in possession of a monopoly of metaphysical knowledge, regards metaphysics as a weed growing beside it, as an unlicensed worker, as a horde of gipsies, and as a rule tolerates it only under the condition that it accommodates itself to serve and follow it.

For where has there ever been true freedom of thought?

It has been vaunted sufficiently; but whenever it wishes to go further than perhaps to differ about the subordinate dogmas of the religion of the country, a holy shudder seizes the prophets of tolerance, and they say: “Not a step further!”

I wish I had an authentic list of all crimes which Christianity has really prevented, and all good deeds it has really performed, that I might be able to place them in the other scale of the balance.

Lastly, as regards the obligations of metaphysics, it has only one; for it is one which endures no other beside it—the obligation to be true.

If one would impose other obligations upon it besides this, such as to be spiritualistic, optimistic, monotheistic, or even only to be moral, one cannot know beforehand whether this would not interfere with the fulfilment of that first obligation, without which all its other achievements …

… existence, a being for self and a being for others, a consciousness of one's own self, and a consciousness of other things, is given us directly, and the two are given in such a fundamentally different manner that no other difference can compare with this.

About himself every one knows directly, about all others only very indirectly.

This is the fact and the problem.

Here, then, lies the datum which alone is able to become the key to everything else, or, as I have said, the single narrow door to the truth.

Accordingly we must learn to understand nature from ourselves, not conversely ourselves from nature.

What is known to us immediately must give us the explanation of what we only know indirectly, not conversely. Do we perhaps understand the rolling of a ball when it has received an impulse more thoroughly than our movement when we feel a motive?

As there can be no object without a subject, so also there can be no subject without an object, i.e., no knower without something different from it which is known. Therefore a consciousness which is through and through pure intelligence is impossible.

The intelligence is like the sun, which does not illuminate space if there is no object from which its rays are reflected.

The knower himself, as such, cannot be known; otherwise he would be the known of another knower. But now, as the known in self-consciousness we find exclusively the will.

… from sleepiness to being in the vein, and inspiration, but also degrees of its nature, of the completeness of this, which accordingly rises gradually from the lowest animals, which can only obscurely apprehend, up to man, and here again from the fool to the genius.

The will alone is everywhere completely itself.

For its function is of the utmost simplicity; it consists in willing and not willing, which goes on with the greatest ease, without effort, and requires no practice.

Rather it retains everywhere its identical nature and shows itself in the form of great attachment to life, care for the individual and the species, egoism and regardlessness of all others, together with the emotions that spring from these.

Even in the smallest insect the will is present, complete and entire; it wills what it wills as decidedly and completely as the man.

The difference lies merely in what it wills, i.e., in the motives, which, however, are the affair of the intellect.

Finally, if there occurs to us some former humiliating incident, we shrink together, would like to sink out of sight, blush with shame, and often try forcibly to distract and divert our thoughts by some loud exclamation, as if to scare some evil spirit.

One sees, the intellect plays, and the will must dance to it.

Indeed the intellect makes the will play the part of a child which is alternately thrown at pleasure into joyful or sad moods by the chatter and tales of its nurse.

Now, however, the contract is unexpectedly broken by the other side, and I perceive with astonishment that this happens to my great satisfaction and relief.

Often we don't know what we wish or what we fear.

We may entertain a wish for years without even confessing it to ourselves, or even allowing it to come to clear consciousness; for the intellect must know nothing about it, because the good opinion which we have of ourselves might thereby suffer.

for it indeed supplies it with motives, but does not penetrate into the secret workshop of its purposes.

It is indeed a confidant of the will, but a confidant that is not told everything.

This is also further confirmed by the fact, which almost every one will some time have the opportunity of observing in himself, that sometimes the intellect does not thoroughly trust the will.

4.

The intellect becomes tired; the will is never tired.

After sustained work with the head we feel the tiredness of the brain, just like that of the arm after sustained bodily work. All knowing is accompanied with effort;

but, as we have seen, it is rather hindered and depressed by this; whence the ancients called emotion animi perturbatio.

The intellect is really like the reflecting surface of water, but the water itself is like the will, whose disturbance therefore at once destroys the clearness of that mirror and the distinctness of its images.

The organism is the will itself, is embodied will, i.e., will objectively perceived in the brain.

But this disturbing influence of the activity of the will upon the intellect can be shown, not only in the perturbations brought about by emotions, but also in many other, more gradual, and therefore more lasting falsifications of thought by our inclinations.

Hope makes us regard what we wish, and fear what we are apprehensive of, as probable and near, and both exaggerate their object.

Plato (according to Ælian, V.H., 13, 28) very beautifully called hope the dream of the waking.

Love and hate falsify our judgment entirely.

In our enemies we see nothing but faults—in our loved ones nothing but excellences, and even their faults appear to us amiable. Our interest, of whatever kind it may be, exercises a like secret power over our judgment;

Hence it is much more fortunate to be born a poet than a philosopher. But the more obstinately an error was held by the other side, the more shameful does the conviction afterwards become.

In the case of an overthrown system, as in the case of a conquered army, the most prudent is he who first runs away from it.

A trifling and absurd, but striking example of that mysterious and immediate power which the will exercises over the intellect, is the fact that in doing accounts we make mistakes much oftener in our own favour than to our disadvantage, and this without the slightest …

what runs contrary to it presents itself to us, in perfect seriousness, as unjust and outrageous, or injudicious and absurd. Hence so many prejudices of position, profession, nationality, sect, and religion.

A conceived hypothesis gives us lynx-eyes for all that confirms it, and makes us blind to all that contradicts it.

What is opposed to our party, our plan, our wish, our hope, we often cannot comprehend and grasp at all, while it is clear to every [pg 433] one else; but what is favourable to these, on the other hand, strikes our eye from afar.

What is opposed to our party, our plan, our wish, our hope, we often cannot comprehend and grasp at all, while it is clear to every [pg 433] one else; but what is favourable to these, on the other hand, strikes our eye from afar.

What the heart opposes the head will not admit.

We firmly retain many errors all through life, and take care never to examine their ground, merely from a fear, of which we ourselves are conscious, that we might make the discovery that we had so long believed and so often asserted what is false.

But over the will itself, over the main tendency or fundamental maxim of it, the intellect has no power.

To believe that knowledge really and fundamentally determines the will is like believing that the lantern which a man carries by night is the primum mobile of his steps.

Whoever, taught by experience or the admonitions of others, knows and laments a fundamental fault of his character, firmly and honestly forms the intention to reform and give it up; but in spite of this, on the first opportunity, the fault receives free course.

on the other hand, much has become so strange to him that he no longer knows himself, and wonders how he ever could have done or said this and that.

In the first half of life to-day for the most part laughs at yesterday, indeed looks down on it with contempt; in the second half, on the contrary, it more and more looks back at it with envy.

But on closer examination it will be found that the changeable element was the intellect, with its functions of insight and knowledge, which, daily appropriating new material from without, presents a constantly changing system of thought, while, besides this, it itself rises and sinks with …

This, however, is rarely the case; rather, anger generally goes far beyond the occasion.

Our fury and rage, the furor brevis, often upon small occasions, and without error regarding them, is like the raging of an evil spirit which, having been shut up, only waits its opportunity to dare to break loose, and now rejoices that it has found it.

This could not be the case if the foundation of our nature were a knower, and willing were merely a result of knowledge; for how came there into the result what did not lie in the elements? The conclusion cannot contain more than the premisses.

It is always the will to which we ascribe the warmth of life; on the other hand, we say the cold understanding, or to investigate a thing coolly, i.e., to think without being influenced by the will.

If we attempt to reverse the relation, and to regard the will as the tool of the intellect, it is as if we made the smith the tool of the hammer.

Nothing is more provoking, when we are arguing against a man with reasons and explanations, and taking all pains to convince him, under the impression that we have only to do with his understanding, than to discover at last that he will not understand;

Without any one consciously noting that on this occasion he was insulted, no one is sorry to place himself tacitly in the way of the advancement of this man.

Thus on this account great mental superiority isolates more than anything else, and makes one, at least silently, hated.

Now it is the opposite of this that makes stupid people so generally liked; especially since many can only find in them what, according to the law of their nature referred to above, they must seek.

… we never infer a good will from a superior mind, nor the latter from the former, nor the opposite from the opposite, but every unprejudiced person accepts them as perfectly distinct qualities, the presence of which each for itself has to be learned from experience.

Great narrowness of mind may coexist with great goodness of heart, and I do not believe Balthazar Gracian was right in saying (Discreto, p. 406), “No ay simple, que no sea malicioso” (“There is no simpleton who would not be malicious”), though he has the Spanish proverb in his favour, “Nunca la necedad anduvo sin malicia” (“Stupidity is never without malice”).

Yet it may be that many stupid persons become malicious for the same reason as many hunchbacks, from bitterness on account of the neglect they have suffered from nature, and because they think they can occasionally make up for what they lack in understanding through …

Answering to this, all religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

Virtue expects its reward in that world; prudence hopes for it in this; genius, again, neither in this world nor in that; it is its own reward.

Accordingly the will is the eternal part, the intellect the temporal.

and although somewhat modified in their expression, they very soon mutually recognise each other even in the most heterogeneous individuals, upon which the similarly disposed agree and the opposed are at enmity.

Brilliant qualities of mind win admiration, but never affection; this is reserved for the moral, the qualities of the character.

Every one will choose as his friend the honest, the good-natured, and even the agreeable, complaisant [pg 451] man, who easily concurs, rather than the merely able man.

A distinctly noble character along with the entire absence of intellectual excellence and culture presents itself as lacking nothing; while, on the contrary, even the greatest mind, if affected with important moral faults, will always appear blamable.

For as torches and fireworks become pale and insignificant in the presence of the sun, so intellect, nay, genius, and also beauty, are outshone and eclipsed by the goodness of the heart.

When this appears in a high degree it can make up for the want of those qualities to such an extent that one is ashamed of having missed them.

… limited understanding, and also grotesque ugliness, whenever extraordinary goodness of heart declares itself as accompanying them, become as it were transfigured, outshone by a beauty of a higher kind, for now a wisdom speaks out of them before which all other wisdom must be dumb.

For goodness of heart is a transcendent quality; it belongs to an order of things that reaches beyond this life, and is incommensurable with any other perfection.

When it is present in a high degree it makes the heart so large that it embraces the world, so that now everything lies within it, no longer without; for it identifies all natures with its own.

The advance of age, which gradually consumes the intellectual powers, leaves the moral qualities untouched. The goodness of the heart still makes the old man honoured and loved when his head already shows the weaknesses which are the commencement of second childhood.

Gentleness, patience, honesty, veracity, disinterestedness, philanthropy, &c., remain through the whole life, and are not lost through the weaknesses of old age; in every clear moment of the worn-out old man they come forth undiminished, like the sun from the winter clouds.

And, on the other hand, malice, spite, avarice, hard-heartedness, infidelity, egoism, and baseness of every kind also remain undiminished to our latest years.

The new-born child makes violent movements, rages, and cries; it wills in the most vehement manner, [pg 455] though it does not yet know what it wills. For the medium of motives, the intellect, is not yet fully developed.

The will is in darkness concerning the external world, in which its objects lie, and now rages like a prisoner against the walls and bars of his dungeon.

But little by little it becomes light: at once the fundamental traits of universal human willing, and, at the same time, the individual modification of it here present, announce themselves.

We certainly know something more of our life than of a novel we have formerly read, yet only very little. The principal events, the interesting scenes, have impressed themselves upon us; in the remainder a thousand events are forgotten for one that has been retained.

The older we become the more do things pass by us without leaving any trace.

Great age, illness, injury of the brain, madness, may deprive us of memory altogether, but the identity of the person is not thereby lost. It rests upon the identical will and the unalterable character of the person.

It rests upon the identical will and the unalterable character of the person. It is it also which makes the expression of the glance unchangeable.

In the heart is the man, not in the head.

It is true that, in consequence of our relation to the external world, we are accustomed to regard as our real self the subject of knowledge, the knowing I, which wearies in the evening, vanishes in sleep, and in the morning shines brighter with renewed …

But it is not founded in the intellect, it is no result of reflection, and in general is not a matter of choice; but this willing of life is something that is taken for granted: it is a prius of the intellect itself.

We ourselves are the will to live, and therefore we must live, well or ill.

Only from the fact that this clinging to a life which is so little worth to them is entirely a priori and not a posteriori can we explain the excessive fear of death that dwells in every living thing, which Rochefoucauld has expressed in his …

Who makes the chicken in the egg? Some power and skill coming from without, and penetrating through the shell? Oh no!

The chicken makes itself, and the force which carries out and perfects this work, which is complicated, well calculated, and designed beyond all expression, breaks through the shell as soon as it is ready, and now performs the outward actions of the chicken, under the name of will.

It cannot do both at once; previously occupied with the perfecting of the organism, it had no care for without.